Monday, April 23, 2007

Clampett Fun Song

I love how the early cartoons are so musical. The early 30s were especially written around music.

By 1940, some of the animators and directors drifted away from long song sequences, in favor of sweet sentimentality, sarcastic humor, realistic special effects and whatever else were the trends.

Clampett was aware of trends, but wasn't a slave to them. He did what he thought was entertaining, whether it fit whatever everyone else was doing or not.

He kept up to date with the current advances in animation, started new trends in creativity and technique, but didn't abandon the best traditions of early cartoons. He directed by instinct and great artistic-cartoonist taste rather than blindly following what the other guys were doing.

This is a really fun sequence from "We, The Animals Squeak".

I wish there was a magic studio somewhere that would preserve the great traditions of the first cartoons while striving to add new and fun techniques and creative ideas. Historically, as new ideas come along, many creative people discard the good ones from their own past, rather than just adding the good new ones to the good old ones.

Clampett followed this philosophy. His cartoons were fully modern, prophetic and yet traditional all at the same time. And so musical!

When I saw this as a kid I freaked out- it was so fun! I've sung that melody every since. The Freleng one...well I never did forget that cartoon for some reason- but I always forget the song until I hear the first two lines of it haha.

Start the school, John! Making rubber hose cartoons would be great. Students could be assigned one of your scenes. You could train people while making cartoons for the internet to generate hype for sponsorship.

I gotta say John, for every place I've seen sponsorship, the webhits are already there first. I think your idea of needing sponsorship up front is backwards in the modern environment. People won't talk to you until you get tens of thousands of hits a day (probably like your blog). But places like newgrounds.com get hundreds of thousands of hits, and they have companies APPROACHING THEM. Build it and they will come kinda thing.

I've never seen either cartoons, but I love both clips! Clampett more, obviously. His cartoons looks more detailed, and their arms actually taper. Check out the cat's jowls! These characters look like the perfect cross between old rubberhose style characters (more evolved than Mickey and Bosko, but still similar desigsn across the board) and the more advanced 40s style (wrinkles!)

>You sure give Jorge Garrido the business.

Who?

That's a sick opposing line of action on that cat threatening that rat.

The Clampett song was funny but I think the comparispn to the Freleng one was a bit un-fair. The characters were meamt to be lazy since the songw asbaout avoiding hard labor, it whouldn't make sense for them to be jovial and active. I will admit though even of Freleng song was meant to be mroe energetic, Clampett still whould have beat Friz.

This might be a stupid question but if any of you guys know the answer... Were those black and white cartoons made in color or black and white?

Originally these are B&W toons. In the sixties and seventies a Korean company was contracted to "color over" many of the classic B&W toons by WB and Fleischer Studios. Many Clampett, Avery, King and Tashlin B&Ws look just plain awful after the process. The Popeyes were even worse!

Thanks Lastangelman but I think my question wasn't clear. I know they were shot in b & w because there wasn't color film in those days but were they done in b& w? Meaning that they used only b & w paint for bgs and cells.

"Thanks Lastangelman but I think my question wasn't clear. I know they were shot in b & w because there wasn't color film in those days but were they done in b& w? Meaning that they used only b & w paint for bgs and cells."

Color film did exist in the 30's; black and white was less expensive, though.

Most of the cartoons planned for black and white photography were painted in shades of gray. The only exception I know of is from Ub Iwerks' studio. He would paint the cartoons in color even though they were going to be photographed in black and white. I guess the thinking was that he could get a wider range of gray tones by doing it that way.